matt40k

Have you tried returning it for a full refund (well minus the £10 top-up you had to also get)

You can get the SQL 2014 migration tool from LA\Capita\MyAccount (formally supportnet) - any idea of KB @Ghostgame? Last time I looked I would say processor - I think its by cores now - but again, check with your licensing rep, quick look on: Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard | Microsoft | Products | - discounted software for education establishments - processor\core is cheaper (plus its less of a headache - you don't have to manage\count licenses\users)

So your upgrading from SQL 2008 to SQL2012? Same server? If so Capita do a tool to migrate it. Are your primary or a secondary? If your a primary you can use the SQL Express version. If your a secondary you'll mostly want to buy a SQL Server 2012 standard license. Not enterprise - you won't use the features and you'll be throwing away ~£20k Core vs Server\CAL - depends on cost and the number of clients your have, break even point is generally around 30, still your mileage may vary so check it out with your MS licensing rep. You'll also be better off going to SQL 2014, as 1/ its supported by Capita, 2/ its got a longer life then SQL2012, especially as SQL2016 is on its way and Microsoft are reducing life of its products to reflex the faster release cycles (Win7 has already had its life reduced). There was a problem with SQL2014 with the indexes and the fact Capita hasn't written them correctly to support SQL2014 new indexing engine - their workaround is to set the database mode to SQL2012 - don't worry, the lovely Capita migration tool will do it all for you. Its just worth know in case you hear some out-of-date info about not going SQL2014.

Appreciate the magic you humbugs - you can accept that a telescope can see a man on the moon or that a man can live on the moon? With no air? Does his house have a lifetime supply of food\water? Clearly its from the little girls imagination - that her grandfather is in a home far way, so far away that might as well be on the moon. In all honestly, she prob got him a ipad so they can Skype\facetime There is always that one person with their mind in the gutter

Did the photographer give you a SIMS photo license file thing? If not you prob need to buy it direct from Capita - @David_Grashoff is the man to ask.

Dont see why, Office 365 is a office suite, just happens to come with storage. Why would they devalue their office suite? Its best of bred, it would be like apple selling a macbook and giving away a imac with ever purchase. If you really want storage, you can buy storage, its list price is £0.049, thats £50 odd per month for a TB of storage. Now the Office 355 will have to pay the azure guys for that storage, why would they pay £3,863.55 per month (before discount) so someone with a basic office suite subscription can backup their 77TB porn collection. Like others have said, beware the free services/add-ons, they are bound to disappear/get hacked. Much better to decouple your requirements - office365 for email/office, something else for actual storage storage (ie not your spreadsheets)

Poke @trolley01 @khoward

Just out of interest, how is changed driven in your work place? Do you push the change? So do you roll out windows 10 first, then staff/students upgrade at home? Or is it the other way round? Do you upgrade because of staff/students? (Or option C your forced)

Which ones are you referring to directly?

Mmm, i trust ms more then google, microsoft makes the bulk of its money from the money i give them, google makes the bulk of its money sell my data. Ott telemetry? What gps location? Not fussed, if they are using it to tell me as i pass sainsburys to pick up milk when i leave work, great, or that i forgot to put my out of office on at work cause i'm still at home ill, great. The point is i can switch it off if i wish, my data isnt sold and its always MY data which i have control over.

Depends what the context was for unlimited, unlimited office files is one thing, unlimited 1tb vm backups is another. Unlimited broadband from virgin media just means they dont count your usage, you have a free for all with your neighbors for your cab connection. Plus side they aren't sacrificing speed as a means to bottlenecking you

Again Also remember financial is easier then opinion. Do you like this new UI? Yes, oh wait, no apps support it, take that back - still it was a stepping stone, like Vista with UAC. It got people to seriously look at touch for windows - even though touch has been around for ages - pretty sure touch was mentioned on the xp installer splashs as it installs

No, i think people have abused it, they are using it for backups and microsoft have gone, hang on, no, this is for your office docs - your powerpoints, word docs, spreadsheets, photos, etc. Not your vm backups. Azure storage is for your backups. Imho your underestimating the office package- excel has over a billion users, pretty much every major company users excel. Its an incredible visualisation tool, if your not using fully, fine, use google docs or whatever. Just saying hey i'm using google apps now because i can backup my vms for "free" is stupid. If i look at my home pc, my work, not my apps, are on onedrive, this is the things i cannot just redownload, this isnt tbs of data. At the end of the day, if google drive works for your backups, fine, nothing stopping you having both google drive and office365, they work fine together. I just think its bad idea to abuse it - most likely they'll can it in the future- still let the good times roll i guess until Google does the excel cost analysis of services

Fact was giving users free space wasn't getting them to buy other services - Microsoft make decisions based on data, they'll throw money at something but if it doesn't have return they'll drop it. Office 365 in terms of MS Office is WAAAY more advance then Google Docs, people buy Office 365 for Office 365, not for the free space. Case and point, the number of users using Office 365 vs OneDrive subscriptions.

Its not an problem with azure infrastructure not coping, its not doing something that is unprofitable and doesn't add much value. Why offer TBs of space for free/peanuts when it costs you and people (who wont abuse it) will pay a premium for it

I thought the whole reason SOLUS3 exists was to speed up deployment cycle - a minor client fix to a single DLL doesn't warranty a re-release it can just be deployed at a click of a button. It also removed the "IT" hold up as well - you don't need the network manager to deploy an MSI, the data manager can just click a few buttons and job done - or enable auto deployments. Surely the stats from SOLUS2 vs SOLUS3 will show upgrades are happening faster @PhilNeal? @CAM - not sure how much affect that will have on schools - most have Microsoft Agreements which gives them the latest toys already so it already "free" to upgrade - well you've already paid and you don't need to pay again.

Why a disembodied finger can't be used to unlock the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5s- you need living tissue - sorry to anyone near you that wasn't quick enough to escape your science

How are they going to cope when you go to Office 2016 when it auto-updates every month!

You shouldn't be using UPN. Its a protected field and should only be used for cross gov joining not within a school joining - use the admission number as this is only unique to your school or use the SIMS internal person. id.

Yer, really need to write that. There is a matching screen where you match your files columns to the sims date fields. Nice and dynamic. https://simsbulkimport.uk/

Tis free too - https://simsbulkimport.uk/

Its why you have insurance - plus I'm not aware of a card giving the police GPS location of the idiot who nick it or telling you which shop you stupidly left it in. Personally I just like the fact I can go get lunch without remembering my wallet

@vikpaw Cheers, yer, often found the "only has read access" turns into db_owner which then turns into "just change this field... and..." which is followed by a Capita bill. In corporate land we say everything has to be developed in DEV and passed to UAT for peer review before running it in PROD, so on the bases 99.9% of schools don't have a DEV or UAT, I'd stick with the, has Capita written it \ peered reviewed it before running it. We actually get told off by the DBAs if we run even select statements on PROD environments as it can affect performance. "the indexes are designed and optimized for the application, not for our queries" is the common response (unlike the warehouse\data marts) @howartp Can you post files on MyAccount like SupportNet?

Surely it depends if they are posting on behalf of their company or off their own back sure? Otherwise we'd all have SchoolName_Forename or whatever. I think Christine was trying to say was not to treat opinions as facts - saying something is rubbish is a opinion which is pretty worthless. You can't put it down as a business reason for rejecting a system. Saying something can't do a particular is technically a fact, but its worth checking with the supplier that it is correct. Facts can be checked and are measurable. Not to say opinions are worthless, asking for opinions on support is a good example, you'll have to do a bit of refinement however with your questions - generally primary schools will want quick fixes with min input\output required by them, secondarys might want the same but more output so they can be more independent going forward - ie how it was fixed.

I think your getting DR and Redundancy muddled up and the number of 9's required. Running fibre from each cabinet to two "server rooms" makes sense. If the main room gets burnt out, replacing switches can done with 24 hrs. Running fibre, yer, if you can get fibre runs done in week I'll be impressed. Generally you have a server room at one end and at the other you'll have the IT office and each cabinet will have fibre each. Backup media is stored in the IT office, the data is stored in the server room. Running an extra fibre when installing it isn't that much extra, especially when you reduce your recovery time from well over a week to 1 day - it isn't something that needs upgrading for a very long time either. Buying another core switch is £££ and needs to be replaced regularly (ish), but it does reduce your recovery time to less then a day. If the school wants this recovery time, they should be finding you the cash. IMHO if you want a true DR setup, build a backup site in Azure then buy a 4G router that can VPN to your Azure site